


a minor fall and a major lift

by Netgirl_y2k



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Canon Disabled Character, Dogs, F/M, Fluff, Margaery is a huge lesbian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 10:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8098126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Netgirl_y2k/pseuds/Netgirl_y2k
Summary: Willas' bad mood was broken by the sight of Sansa sitting on a concrete planter outside the cafe. She held a takeaway cup of hot chocolate in one hand, and what was either a prehistoric wolf or the world's largest husky was taking marshmallows gently from her fingertips.





	

_i._

The first time Willas met the new waitress she spilled cold cappuccino dregs down the front of his shirt.

"I'm so sorry--"

She had long red hair, and long, long legs. She was wearing a t-shirt with the _Highgarden Cafe_ logo, and had a black apron tied around her waist.

"No, it's alright. I wasn't looking--" Willas had been concentrating on making sure his crutch didn't catch on the sidewalk; if his leg gave out here he wasn't sure that he'd be able to get back up.

The redhead scanned her eyes down to the spreading stain on Willas' chest, and then down again to the brace on his leg. Her eyes widened. "Oh, god--"

Willas blushed, brushed past her, and made his way through the sidewalk tables towards the cafe; the waitress scrambled around to open the door for him.

*

Willas found a table towards the back of the cafe, he removed his coat and pulled a battered paperback from his pocket. 

The red haired waitress was back behind the counter, and between customers she shot wide-eyed looks at Willas.

 _Towards me, or my leg_ , Willas thought bitterly. 

He was surprised to find himself the only Tyrell in the cafe; this was one of the family businesses, after all. And his family were the ones who had insisted that he couldn't spend all day every day brooding over his accident in the house. He'd been sure that Margaery, at least, was working today.

As if answering his thoughts his sister emerged from the stockroom, decidedly _not_ dressed for work in a bright, summery dress that stopped mid-thigh. She stopped and leaned over the counter towards the redhead; they both looked over at Willas and giggled. Willas frowned, picked up his book, and pretended to read as Margaery approached his table.

"I think the coffee stain on your shirt rather ruins the Mr. Darcy effect," she said, referring to the copy of _Pride & Prejudice_ that Willas was peering over.

Willas put the book down and his lips quirked up; his little sister had always been able to make him smile, even when he was in the hospital. "That just goes to show that you've never read Jane Austen; it _adds_ to the Darcy effect." 

"I was just telling Sansa that you're my brother-" Margaery slid into the seat opposite Willas "-so throwing cold coffee over you is not only permitted, but practically encouraged."

Willas looked over Margaery's shoulder at the redhead - Sansa apparently. "She didn't work here before, did she?"

"No, but she's a friend, and she needed a job after her boyfriend broke up with her, so..."

"That's, um, terrible." Willas sounded unconvincing even to himself.

"Not really, he was a dick." Margaery primped her hair a little. "She's covering my shift today because I've got a date. Asha's on shore leave."

Willas had always had a hard time keeping track of Margaery's girls of the week even before he'd spent a month in a coma. "How does Myrcella feel about that?"

"Myrcella's mother found out about us-" Margaery shrugged carelessly "-so that's over." She stood and smiled warmly. "It really is good to see you out of the house, Willas."

*

Sansa brought Willas a slice of lemon cheesecake when the cafe quieted down. 

"I'm sorry for this morning. This is only the second shift I've worked here, and well... I really am sorry."

"I don't think it was the best of introductions," Willas agreed. He felt like he should stand, but his crutch was across the table and he'd propped his leg up on the chair opposite to ease its aching, and there was no graceful way to rise, so he remained seated when he offered Sansa his hand. "Willas Tyrell, it's a pleasure to meet you."

Sansa looked down at her feet, smiled, and took his hand. "Sansa Stark, delighted." 

 

_ii._

Willas thumbed open his worn copy of _Crime and Punishment_ as Loras chatted to Sansa up at the counter; he had thought that spending time in the head of a character whose self pity eclipsed Willas' own might somehow make him feel better. 

Loras accepted a bottle of water from Sansa and in lieu of payment offered her the yellow flower he'd swiped from the small vase on Willas' table. 

Willas rolled his eyes; it had always been a source of amused annoyance that his youngest brother, who'd known he liked boys since he was four, and at the age of fourteen had declared that Renly was The One, was smoother with pretty girls than Willas himself was. 

Loras trotted back over to Willas, picked up his gym bag and cleats, and said, "Do you need me to give you a ride home after I'm done with practice?"

Willas tried to smooth the scowl from his face. He appreciated knowing that his family would be there to catch him if he fell, but it still grated that his baby brother felt the need to mother him. 

"No need. Leonette is working the closing shift today, I'll catch a ride home with her and Garlan."

*

Sansa passed by Willas' table; the flower Loras had given her was tucked behind her ear. 

There had always been girls who pined after Loras, and Willas didn't want Sansa to be embarrassed by an awkward misunderstanding. "Sansa, you know that Loras is..."

Sansa looked up from where she was wiping down the next table. "Oh, yes, I know. Renly is very dashing, isn't he?"

"Yes. I-- I mean-- not that I'm..." With Willas' bad leg it wasn't like he could get up and run away, so he decided that the least he could do was stop digging himself deeper. "Yes. He is. Very dashing."

He and Sansa shared a conspiratorial smile before she headed back over to the counter.

*

Not all of the cafe's customers were as gallant as Loras; Willas saw Sansa's eyes start to water as the man's complaints about how his cappuccino had too much foam and wasn't hot enough grew louder. Sansa clamped her hand over her mouth and fled to the stockroom.

"Elinor," Willas said, struggling to his feet, and his cousin took over appeasing the angry customer.

Sansa was sitting on the floor, her back against a bag of coffee beans, sniffling into a napkin. 

Willas knew that if he sat down here it would pain his leg for days, and he would be fortunate if he were able to get up unaided. He leaned his crutch against the wall, flexed his knee, and looked around for something he could use to ease his way down to the floor. 

Sansa noticed, and pushed herself up by the heels of her sneakers. Willas retrieved his crutch, and swallowed the grunt of relief as he leaned his weight on it.

"It was stupid," Sansa said, and it wasn't until she added, "it wasn't even about that customer," that Willas realised that she wasn't talking about his aborted attempt to join her on the floor. 

Sansa wiped the tears from her eyes, and Willas couldn't help but notice that standing they were almost the same height.

"It's about my dog," said Sansa.

"Well, then it's definitely not stupid," Willas said, and then fearing that he sounded patronising he added: "I've loved dogs since I was a child. My own dog is an old enough fellow now that he doesn't mind having a cripple for a master, he just wants to be allowed to sleep the day away on my bed at home, but I wouldn't be without him."

Willas couldn't even regret that Sansa's mental image of his bed now included an elderly spaniel, because she smiled through her tears and said, "I'm the same. I could have left Lady at home with my little brothers, but I didn't want to be without her. And now Joff - he used to be my boyfriend." Sansa looked embarrassed. "Joff tried to get Lady put down as a dangerous dog, and when that didn't work because she's _not_ , he complained to my landlord about the noise; he doesn't even live in my building. If I can't find someone to look after Lady while I'm at work I'll have to send her home."

"Bring her here," Willas said.

"I'm sure the health and safety people would love that." Sansa tried to laugh it off.

"She can sit at one of the outdoor tables with me; the weather's nice, and I'm here all day anyway."

Sansa blinked at him, like his offer was hard to believe. "Do you mean it?"

*

Willas' dad dropped him off down the street from the cafe.

"Are you sure you're okay, son?"

Willas scowled, struggling to wrangle his leg in its brace through the passenger door of the low slung sports car that his dad had bought in honor of his mid-life crisis. "I can walk to the corner, dad."

Willas' bad mood was broken by the sight of Sansa sitting on a concrete planter outside the cafe. She held a takeaway cup of hot chocolate in one hand, and what was either a prehistoric wolf or the world's largest husky was taking marshmallows gently from her fingertips.

Willas hadn't asked Sansa what sort of dog Lady was, and he wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but he couldn't help the grin that spread across his face.

"Willas!" Sansa grinned too. "This is Lady; say hello, Lady."

Lady sat, looked Willas up and down, licked his hand, and then offered him her paw. 

Big as the dog was, Willas still had to bend his knee more than was entirely comfortable to take her paw, but he didn't really mind the twinge.

*

Lady lay happily underneath Willas' table. People stared, but Willas was eighty-five percent sure that they were staring at the unusually large and striking husky and not at his leg.

 

_iii._

The girl ordering at the counter when Willas limped into the cafe had her back to him. He recognised her by her white blonde hair and the dragon tattoo on her shoulder.

She thanked Sansa, accepted her 'extra hot' coffee, turned, and nearly walked straight into Willas.

"Willas. Hey."

"Hello, Dany."

Sansa blinked. "Was it just me or was that a little awkward?" she asked once Daenerys was out of earshot.

"I knew her brother Rhaegar before he died." Willas shrugged one shoulder and his mouth quirked up. "I also once caught her doing the walk of shame from Margaery's bedroom at six in the morning."

Sansa's cheeks pinked. "I'll bring your tea over when I get a minute."

Willas made his way over to his usual indoor table. It had rained all of last week, and the cold and the wet had aggravated Willas' leg. Luckily they'd discovered that Lady was perfectly happy hanging out at home with the Tyrell family dogs while Sansa was at work. 

All the same, something about Willas' elderly and overweight spaniel Garth shuffling around after the lean and athletic husky bothered Willas. He'd said as much in his last e-mail to Oberyn; Oberyn had replied with a series of mocking emojis that he must have learned from one of his daughters.

*

"I was thinking about what you said earlier," Sansa pitched her voice low as she gathered empty cups onto a tray, "about Margaery and that blonde girl?"

Willas flinched, and tried to hide it. He had fielded a lot of questions about his siblings' love lives over the years; is your brother taken? Is your sister a lesbian? It was always embarrassing, but he could usually laugh it off; he just hadn't expected it from Sansa. 

Sansa slipped into the chair opposite and leaned towards Willas. "Margaery asked me for the phone number of a friend of mine, and Brienne... Brienne's lovely, but she's not exactly the walk of shame type, and--"

"You're worried that Margaery will break her heart?" Sansa nodded, relieved that he got it, and Willas let out a breath. "My sister can be careless with other people's hearts, but she's not cruel. I'm sure if you tell her why you're worried she'll understand."

Sansa smiled a grateful smile and picked up her tray to get back to work. Willas wasn't sure what possessed him to call after her, "Sansa? I've never been the walk of shame type myself."

Sansa blushed, grinned, and said, "Me neither."

*

Sansa joined Willas for lunch. She'd put a fuzzy sweater on over her _Highgarden Cafe_ t-shirt so that the customers wouldn't interrupt her break.

"What are you reading?" Sansa asked, popping a cherry tomato from her salad into her mouth.

Willas held up his copy of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ and Sansa put her hand up to her mouth to smother a giggle. "I'm sorry-- it's just that you study literature, right?"

Willas didn't want to admit to Sansa that he still wasn't sure if he was going back to grad school after the accident, but it occurred to him that not wanting to admit it was perhaps a sign that he should go back after all.

"You don't think this is literature? Well, let me tell you--" the copy of _Hitchhiker's Guide_ was the same one Willas had had as a boy, and it still included his fourteen year old self's exclamation marks and underlining, so he had no problems finding especially funny parts to read aloud to her.

It was after Sansa had shyly asked to borrow his book and, still chuckling, was preparing to get back to work that Willas said, "Oh, I'm sorry-- I never asked what you're going to school for?"

"International relations."

"Really?" Willas grinned. "You'll have heard of my grandmother, then."

"It was actually how Margaery and I first became friends; I guess I wanted to hear all about the queen of thorns."

Willas thought about that as he watched Sansa bustle around behind the counter. Sansa had never asked him about his infamous, globe-trotting grandmother; she didn't pressure him to talk about his leg or his feelings. They talked about books, and dogs, and the ridiculous scrapes their respective siblings got them into, and the cafe's regulars. She didn't treat him as a cripple to be pitied, or as her employer's son who she had to be polite to, but as a friend. 

 

 _iv._

"That's an odd choice of book for you, isn't it?" Sansa asked. Willas looked up from his copy of _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_ and Sansa looked mortified. "Oh, God. That was horribly rude, wasn't it? I'm so sorry."

Willas shrugged. "It's not really about motorcycles. Although if there was a time to read up on them, it would have been _before_ my accident."

Self-deprecating humour had always been Willas' specialty, but it was only recently, and with Sansa, that he'd been able to make light of his accident. 

Sansa cocked her head to the side. "I still can't picture you on a motorcycle."

"Can you picture me flying off of one?" Willas said, and the words only stuck in his throat for a second.

"Oh--! Don't."

"Sorry," Willas said, rubbing at his jaw, and Sansa smiled and said, "Although with that scruff you do kind of look like a rebel."

They'd shaved Willas' beard off when he was in the hospital, and he was only now getting around to growing it back. Willas felt like an adolescent boy trying to grow his first beard; Sansa had that effect on him a lot.

"Do you-- do you like it?"

"I liked you clean shaven." Sansa looked at him through her eyelashes. "And I think that I'll like the full beard."

 

_v._

Despite the fact that all the Tyrell siblings still lived in the family home, it was rare to find all four of them in the same place at the same time.

Spending a Friday afternoon sitting in the cafe with his brothers and sister eating pastries had been... nice.

"I'm seeing Brienne tonight and again on Sunday afternoon," said Margaery, when they were talking about their weekend plans.

"Not Saturday too?" Willas teased, just as Garlan said, "Wait, who's Brienne?"

"The girl Margaery's been _courting_ ," Loras said with a roll of his eyes. 

"Thought you were more the love 'em and leave 'em type, Margaery?" Garlan said jokingly. 

"Shut up," said Margaery. "I like this girl." Then, in what Willas took as an unchivalrous turning on the weakest member of the herd, she added: "I'm still moving faster than Willas. Have you actually asked Sansa out yet, Willas?"

"Yeah, Willas--" his brothers chimed in "--have you?" 

Willas blustered. "She works here, it would be inappropriate."

"You could always ask while she's using our house as a free doggie daycare," said Loras. "That might be less inappropriate."

"Or during one of your hours long phone calls about life, love, and literature," Margaery chimed in with a smirk, and Willas remembered that Margaery's bedroom was next to his, and that he'd had to buy noise cancelling headphones so as not to hear her, er, female callers.

"I--" Willas looked down at his leg brace, and after a long moment Garlan thumped him on the shoulder and gallantly changed the subject.

*

Willas was surprised to find Margaery bustling about wearing a _Highgarden Cafe_ t-shirt and carrying a tray.

"Don't tell me you're actually working this evening?"

"Sansa has covered for me when I've been on enough dates, I thought it was time I returned the favour."

"Wha--?"

Sansa emerged from the stockroom; she'd just taken her long red hair out of the braid she wore it in for work, and it fell in loose waves around her shoulders. 

Margaery winked broadly at them both and headed back to the counter.

"So-- Margaery says you have a date tonight?"

"I don't know yet." Sansa smiled shyly. "The guy I'd like to go out with hasn't asked me yet, but Margaery knows him, and she says he's sure to say yes if I ask him."

"Margaery's-" _a total pain in the neck_ "-helpful like that. Sansa, would you like to..."

She cleared her throat. "Actually, I've been kind of working up to this all day, so unless you're going to say no, I'd like to ask."

"Uh, by all means."

"Willas Tyrell, would you like to go on a date with me?"

"Sansa Stark, nothing would please me more."

Sansa beamed, and Willas offered her the arm that wasn't occupied with his crutch. When she took it and he could lean a fraction of his weight on her it didn't feel like pity at all.


End file.
